I’m pondering a misconception I’m releasing around what it means to have “closure.”

I’ve been struggling mightily with what felt like a really crippling blow to my self-esteem. I kept performing autopsies on my relationship with The Dominant Guy to try to figure out what more I could have done to make it work. What I didn’t do. Where I fell short. What lessons I needed to learn. What I needed to do to grow and be a better slave, how I could salvage something so I didn’t feel as though I had made some terrible error.

And then, after a friend decided to yell at me for a while in the middle of the night, I realized that I had been approaching this from a POV that was damaging.

Sometimes it is very easy for me to share my story. I run to the keyboard and pour out an idea that has sprung to mind, or eagerly type out the results of some brainhamster action. And other times, I agonize over every word, humming “Oh Lord, please don’t let me be misunderstood…” tersely under my breath over and over, hoping that I will hit it just right, and that people reading will grok my ideas, not tear me apart, have mercy on my soul, and see themselves in my story.

Other times, I am compelled to NOT share, because of internal ethical considerations or external influences.

And other times I desperately want to share and…can’t. A combination of things. Timing, uncertainty, confusion, anger, sadness, disappointment, fear…and in those times, I just have to wait.

I hate waiting. But I have learned a great deal about patience in the past decade or so. And even more in the past year or so.

Today @TheDominantGuy and I had some time to have a phone date. Which I love so very much. There are still Big Ass Things on the table to discuss and that might have gone down…but the second stage of emotional heavy-lifting didn’t happen. We got to catch up on other stuff. And actually just talk, which is so lovely.

We had a very lively discussion about my rantlet on FetLife, which wound up becoming quite the little discussion, which is cool. (I’ve put it up here for those who aren’t on FetLife) And while he agreed with and understood my point, he reminded me that sometimes? People do find themselves caught off-guard and reacting in ways that might seem inappropriate.

Yeah I know dude but it still doesn’t mean it doesn’t bug the shit out of me.

It happens that some submissives, especially if they haven’t experienced that hyper-focused attention from a d-type before, don’t know what else to do. It is instinctive. They just get caught up in the laser-like focus of dominance…

<snort>

What?

It is also known as poor impulse-control! You CAN maintain…you just CHOOSE not to.

I am just rambling a bit…I have a great deal on my heart and on my mind but the process is still in process and lots of it really is a bit more personal than can be dissected in the public forum of blogs and such. But I have to write something, and I’m a compulsive sharer, and this way I can further procrastinate on real work while pretending to be productive. :-)

Sometimes, relationships are rough. Sometimes we make choices that have blowback that is more substantial than we expect, and then ya just gotta step back and pick the shrapnel from your face. Blah blah blah, I’ll have a McYadda with cheese, hold the pickles, hold the lettuce.

Let us just say I’m looking at and chewing on some challenging emotional shit these days.

Today was a day with a bunch of emotional push-and-pull, heavy lifting, you know, the fun stuff. Its kind of funny when part of the Thing That Needs To Be Hashed Out involves the very core of relationshit, and that’s communication. I’m a big fan of the stuff. And it really is all you’ve got in terms of glue when you are doing long-distance relationships. So when that communication stream becomes an issue? You’ve gotta talk about it. And you’ve gotta make time for that. But what if the dwindling, finite resource of time in which we can make communication happens is at the root of the turbulence…? Yeah. Catch-22 caliber funtimes.

I hadn’t cried like that in a long, long time. Crying is something I usually do for very short bursts, then it ebbs. Maybe a minute? Tops. And then I have done what I needed to do and can either sit with the emotion or start to recover from whatever triggered the collapse.

But this was way, way past that. I needed to cry so hard it wore me the fuck out. Because I could sense if I didn’t go balls-out on a good session of sobbing I’d be having random outbursts for an indefinite period of time and I sure as fuck didn’t have time for that.

The evening before, I’d had a conversation with The Dominant Guy that started out well. Very well, in fact. he was giving me direction regarding writing he wanted me to do. I was pleased because this is stuff we’ve had on the table for a while now, so I was glad to get a handle on it. But I felt oddly guarded and kind of off balance. I chalked it up to the fact that everything has been off-balance of late, we haven’t been communicating with as much consistency and life in general has been full of Stuff & Whatnot.
In the midst of the conversation there was a switchback, where I had to get some check-in and I’ve written a bit about what that was like.

The part that was only thinly referenced was what motivated the insane crying jag that erupted the next morning.

Now…in being involved with poly people, one has to assume that, well, they’re gonna do what poly people do and have other people in their lives. In the case of my being involved with The Dominant Guy, the mitigating circumstance, for me, was that the preexisting conditions in his life were known quantities to me. Wife, check. Girlfriend, check. Play-partners, check. According to the job-openings on his profile, he was looking for a slave.
So technically…technically? Logically? There was no reason for me to have a fuse lit when he told me that he and Mrs. TheDominantGuy were opening up discussion about again having someone in service to them.
Logically? Non-starter.
Emotionally however…holy shit.Continue reading »

I’m no longer surprised that I have this reflexive compulsion to obey The Dominant Guy. That was a given since we first met.

What does continue to surprise me is the depth of how far that compulsion goes, and how I sincerely obey before I have even processed what he wants.

Submitting when you are doing something you want to do already isn’t all that challenging. It is very challenging when the person whose voice causes your thought processes to actually stop and change direction at their behest is yanking your chain when everything in your body is starting that downhill slide.

As busy as my life is, TDG seems to manage to be even busier much of the time, so our being able to connect and have Pithy talks about Pithy Shit isn’t always easy. Today was one of those days where the set-up for some important negotiations to which I’ve been looking forward for a bit were put into motion. OK, so I’m listening, I’m asking good questions, I’m getting my brain around what he wants.

Then as happens, he says something I interpret in a way that maybe wasn’t precisely his intention.Continue reading »

So…long-distance relationships are teh lame. We can agree they are not really all that ideal. Some times are easier than others. And there is a terrible amount of pressure on the time you can eke out to be together virtually, because by the time you have the bandwidth to talk, goddammit, it had better be connected, efficient. meaningful, moving, touching, vital…

Yeah.

A week of missed connections and tech-snafus and I finally…FINALLY had The Dominant Guy on the phone and FINALLYhad the breathing room to tackle some Important Talking Things and FINALLY was able to get my feet under the things I wanted to say and had SOME coherent thought process in place…

I was nonplussed to find myself trailing along…again…trying to keep up with The DominantGuy which is a challenge on a slow day and OMFG! WTF!! SMH… on a busy day. And I turned around and he’d vanished, again. And I’m standing there, feeling at loose ends. Waiting. Again.

Much of being in service is of course, waiting. For orders. For answers. For time. To be seen. To be praised. To be corrected. For calm. And I am much better about being patient than I was when I was first in service. But this time things are very, very different. Expectations are clearer, communication is better, I’m more present, and less fearful.

Except when I get the scent of abandonment. Then it becomes seriously problematic. I have what feels like very mild low-level panic attacks when gears shift faster than I am able to parse. If I am unable to keep up with him, and he goes about his business, I get fish out of water gasping floppy panicky and that is NOT ME! I am strong, I am invincible…I am…I am a mess.Continue reading »

“The only real failure in life is not to be true to the best one knows.” ~Buddha

As a submissive – someone who prefers relationships where there is a mutually beneficial unequal power dynamic – I have done quite a bit of self-exploration around my needs and desires. And as someone who seeks out a master / slave relationship – a relationship where one human secedes power and control over themselves on an ongoing basis to another human – I have had to navigate some very rough seas before finding a safe harbor of self-acceptance. This is an ongoing process, and one in which I’ve been participating for many years. My experience has been inclusive of several years of real-time experience, and may more years of exploration, self-examination, trial-and-error, and research. But research and bits and pieces of experience and all of these things can only get one so far. So much about relationships involves…well…relating. You can spend years in study but until you’re field tested? It hovers in the realm of theory.

I have always been an advocate of self-advocacy. It is so very vital for those in power-exchange relationships to do their very best to negotiate carefully. All relationships have a degree of vulnerability: those of us who voluntarily accept the will of another as superseding our own, or who agree to accept additional responsibility for another human as their “property” have an additional layer of vulnerability. From the perspective of those who submit, the need to remain open and transparent can feel extremely risky. The same holds true for those on the other side of the slash. Dominants and masters put themselves on the line, too. It is important to maintain a balance amidst the inequality.

I have grown so much. I’ve pushed myself beyond the bounds of what I thought I needed to find joy, what I thought I found desirable, what I thought was possible.

It was a year ago today I shook hands with a man who, I would very soon learn, was to become central to my life.

Last weekend I found myself on the floor in a play-space that had been made sacred by the labor and intentions of a close-knit group of people. There isn’t anything particularly special about a hotel ballroom. And there sure as hell isn’t anything special about the hideous carpeting in said ballroom.

But there is a magic when you realize that you are being pushed into the aforementioned hideous carpet and you feel every inch of skin being abraded against it as you writhe on the floor, trying to breathe.

I was past coherency. I didn’t think about anything clearly except how it was becoming more and more difficult to breathe. I was surprised to learn that my previous issues with breath-play had been neatly circumvented. I’ve had breath-play on my limit list since the first time someone had put their hands around my throat and I immediately experienced a stabbing headache. I though this was probably a bad idea.*

The Ongoing Epic Battle Royale about breath-play aside? I’m an advocate of only doing shit the outcome of which you’re prepared to handle. That stabbing headache occurred even with mild pressure restricting the flow of oxygen to my brain or air to my lungs, so it was right out.

The Dominant Guy happens to enjoy this type of play, and he has partners with whom he can explore that, so I did not think I’d be the recipient of such an event as a full blown breathplay scene.